


Young and Battered Hearts

by mischiefiswritten



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant - plus extra!, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Family/Friendship - Freeform, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Not-So-Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, romance because of course
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 04:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15089045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischiefiswritten/pseuds/mischiefiswritten
Summary: The boy who was adrift from the start, and the girl who had everything stolen away. Alistair Theirin and Elowen Cousland’s lives could have been two sides of the same coin, never to meet, if not for the Grey Wardens. Now bound by an oath forged in tainted blood, the youngest and very last of Ferelden’s order are setting out on a journey to raise an army, quell a civil war, and defeat the Archdemon before the Blight swallows them all. Thrust together at the start of the greatest calamity of the age, trimmed in their own personal tragedies, the two begin as allies, but as companionship grows into a bond greater than friendship, they begin to see the potential for something rare and wonderful.





	Young and Battered Hearts

It was the stirring of Kerberos that first roused her to the fog between waking and sleeping. The mabari chuffed, raising to a sitting position. When Elowen pried her eyes halfway open to stare groggily at the hound, he did not look to her at all. He was still at his nightly post beside her bed, close enough that she could graze his fur if she simply hung one arm over the edge.

But his ears were held sharply at attention, and his nose snuffled intently at the night air. Elowen peered through the dark at him with a slowness of thought that seemed to be saying, ‘close your eyes, go back to sleep and the Fade.’

_More rats?_ She thought, recalling the uproar he’d caused in the kitchens when he pursued the large, nasty rodents into the pantry earlier that day. Or perhaps it was more correct to say yesterday, as it had to be the earliest hours of morning by now. The very thought of the time made her eyelids grow heavier. And yet…?

Kerberos’ head twitched this way and that, as though trying to find the angle that best caught some distant sound. She strained her own ears, listening for whatever it was, but no noise reached her ears. All was peaceful in the sleep-drenched castle, as it should be. As it always was.

_More rats_ , she told herself, hardly able to keep her eyes open. They would have to see to that rat problem. Poor Nan would be beside herself to find an infestation on her hands.

Elowen was just drifting off when Kerberos leapt to his feet, a growl rumbling deep in his chest. She jerked herself up onto her forearms, bewildered and heart pounding. Kerberos stared at the door.

Hackles raised. Hair on end.

_CRASH!_ The heavy wood of her bedroom door burst open, hinges groaning and handle rattling, with enough force that it collided with the stone wall. “My lady! They’ve taken the cas–“

The last syllable was stolen away, dissolved into a horrific, wet gurgle as the servant’s windpipe was shredded. An arrowhead protruded from his throat. Elowen’s eyes were hung on that gleaming bit of metal as the short moment stretched to a crawling pace. Time caught up with them, and the man collapsed dead on her threshold.

A scream tore from Elowen’s throat.

The sounds of fighting finally reached her as she scrambled from her bed, sheets and nightgown tangling around her legs. In her panic, she thrashed and yanked at the linens. Heart pounding. Blood screaming in her ears. Kerberos was charging out the door, vaulting over the newly fallen corpse to attack the approaching soldier who was already nocking another arrow. Elowen’s hands and knees collided with cold stone – finally free. Ignoring the sting, she darted for a chest of drawers, yanking out the first pair of breeches she touched.

_They’ve taken the castle. They’ve taken the castle. They’ve taken the castle._

The words ripped past her like a violent wind. What did that mean? _WHO?_

From the sounds of things, Kerberos was giving no quarter. He was defending his mistress as all good mabari did – giving her precious time to equip herself. The sheer terror was still thrumming in her mind. Was this the first war death she’d witnessed firsthand? A glance over her shoulder confirmed she was still relatively sheltered in her room. Just so long as Kerberos was at the door.

A memory she’d long since tucked away in some mental drawer as an old memento came bobbing to the surface. Distantly, her mother taught a much younger version of herself to tie up a shift to gain enough mobility to fight – or escape. ‘Girding your loins,’ she’d called it. Elowen had laughed.

But now, in the dark where blood had spilled, her fingers fumbled with the fabric of her nightdress. She tied up the skirt clumsily and began jerking on pieces of armor.

_They’ve taken the castle, they’ve taken the castle, they’ve taken the castle._ Each repetition fueled the shaking of her hands as they clutched at fasteners. _They’vetakenthecastlethey’vetakenthe-_

A bracer clattered to the floor, jolting her from her panic just before it could sweep her away. A deep breath, and the bracer was retrieved. A deep breath, and the bracer was in place. A deep breath, and she was armed. Her father and Fergus entrusted her with Castle Cousland.

She would not let it fall without her.

With no time left to shelter her, the daughter of the Teyrn burst into the corridor, blade at the ready. She quickly closed quarters with the archer and swordsman who had not fled or fallen to her hound and fell into long-practiced rhythms of attack and defense. The last of them fell, and Elowen moved for the next corridor. She must find the token force her father had left behind. She must rally them to organize their defense; she must get to the bottom of whatever –

The door leading to her parents’ chamber swung open, and Elowen’s blade snapped to the ready reflexively. But it was her mother. Her mother, dressed in a fine set of leather armor. Elowen couldn’t help but gape a little – she hadn’t seen this side of her mother in many years. Not since before she turned to matchmaking for her daughter.

“Darling!” Teyrna Eleanor cried, relief making her voice ragged, “I heard the fighting and feared the worst! Are you hurt?” She rushed to her younger child’s side, checked her over, and embraced her desperately when she was satisfied Elowen was healthy.

Elowen hadn’t a scratch on her yet, but she was certain she looked a fright. Her pallor must have been ghostly from the terror of her awakening, not to mention the mussed state of her hair and her clumsily tied nightgown-turned-shirt sticking out from under her armor. “I was going to ask you the same, Mother.”

Her voice sounded odd in her own ears. Breathless maybe, but not shaky as she would have anticipated. She spoke slowly, as if she weren’t sure this was a time or place for conversation in such quietness.

Eleanor nodded. “I am. Thanks to you, they never made it through the door. A scream woke me, and when I saw men in the corridor, I barricaded the entrance.” It was a small thing – one life out of many in the castle that was confirmed to each of them – but the relief was immeasurable. But in the next moment, the atmosphere of gratitude became grim. The Teyrna gripped her daughter’s arm tightly and peered meaningfully into her eyes. “Did you see their shields?! These are Howe’s men!”

Elowen lurched backward, repulsed by the news. She twisted to look at one of the fallen men and surely enough, the Arl’s heraldry was emblazoned on his shield. She felt dizzy.

“Why would they attack us?!” her mother continued.

Why indeed. The cold dread in her vein slowly heated, catching fire and turning to rage as she began to put the pieces together. “He’s betrayed Father!” she spat, “He attacks while our troops are gone!” The dirty coward! The same man who’d implied a match with his son and called her glib that evening. She cursed herself for letting fear wash away her wits – she should have known sooner.

The words sparked understanding in Eleanor that washed over her features in an icy cascade. “You don’t think… Howe’s men were delayed on purpose?” She immediately answered her own question. “That bastard! I’ll cut his lying throat myself!”

Elowen couldn’t help but echo that sentiment. But where was her father?

After equipping her mother from the mostly forgotten armory nearby, they struck out to find him. Mace and bow, sword and shield, teeth and muscle. Mother, daughter, and hound made their way through a castle under siege. Furniture had been tossed and destroyed, paintings and tapestries torn. They made their way slowly to the main hall, each room they entered offering a new heartache. Young pages and Elowen’s old tutor, dead in the library. Servants, dead in corridors. Eleanor’s guests, and even Fergus’s wife and child, dead in their rooms. All dead. All slain in the night.

The time for mourning would come, Elowen told herself when her heart cried out for her to sob at the sight of her young nephew. The time for mourning would come when dawn broke, and the castle was theirs once again. “Come away, Mother,” she said firmly. There were more battles to be fought before they could allow their tears to fall.

Each of the Howe soldiers that met them paid personally for those lives. Elowen could have wept again – this time with bittersweet relief – as she and her mother finally entered the main hall, which a small detachment of their own men still held. Ser Gilmore was amongst them, defending the gate.

“Your Ladyship! My lady!” Ser Gilmore called to them after they helped strike down the enemy archers that were encroaching, his face lighting up despite the grim circumstances and their now battle-worn appearance. “You’re both alive! I was certain Howe’s men had gotten through.”

Elowen didn’t have the heart to tell him they _had_ gotten through. She herself didn’t want to think how close she and her mother had come to joining the rest of the family in death.

He continued, “When I realized what was happening, it was all I could do to shut the gates. But they won’t keep out Howe’s men for long.” He looked at them each in turn, and Elowen was dismayed at the hopeless look in his eyes. It was the look of a soldier resigned to die for loyalty. His voice was soft as he gazed at her and said, “If you’ve another way out of the castle, use it quickly.”

Her heart sank further than she’d thought possible. If Gilmore was saying this, it meant…

Castle Cousland was lost.

“But we need to find Father!” she heard herself saying.

Gilmore nodded and pointed toward another part of the castle. “When I last saw the Teyrn,” he said, “he’d been badly wounded. I urged him not to go, but he was determined to find you. He went toward the kitchen – I believe he thought to find you at the servants’ exit in the larder.”

Eleanor was determined to waste no more time. Thanking Ser Gilmore, she took off for the kitchen and her husband. Elowen, on the other hand, found herself rooted to the spot. Kerberos waited a few paces away, ears pricked. “Come with us,” she beseeched in a whisper.

The barest smile passed across his features, and it broke her heart. He declined, even as she pleaded. So many people, _good_ people, had died tonight. She wanted him to live. But his sense of duty held fast, and she knew he was right. And she knew, as he reached out and squeezed her hand in farewell, that he would die a noble death, as all good knights did.

The last she saw of him as she ran after her mother was the back of his dented armor as he rejoined the men at the gate.

Elowen’s stomach plummeted when they finally reached the larder. Her father, the Teyrn, was collapsed on the floor, clutching at an ugly, gaping wound in his abdomen. His blood gushed past his hands.

“Maker’s blood!” Eleanor cried, brushing past her daughter who stayed frozen in the doorway.

“Howe’s men found me first,” Bryce said. He was struggling to push himself up. “Nearly… did me in right there.”

His daughter wanted to retch. She had _never_ seen her father made so weak. His strength had always been her strength, and now… now, it was a labor to even draw breath. It occurred to her then just how severely her world had been cracked in two. A crash from elsewhere in the castle made all three of them quiet, staring at the doorway in anticipation of enemy soldiers. _How will I defend them?_ Elowen thought, _Mother is tired and distraught, Father is wounded, and I… I’m not enough._

“We must go,” she declared with more courage than she felt, “Once Howe’s men breach the gate, they’ll find us here. We have to escape.”

Her father shook his head, expression far too resolute for her liking. “I won’t… even survive standing, I think.” His daughter shook her head vehemently at the quietness slipping into his voice. “Someone… must reach Fergus and… and tell him what has happened here.”

Finally Elowen joined her parents, crouching so she could put a hand on her father’s shoulder. She ignored that his blood was underfoot. “No. You’ll tell him yourself.”

Bryce Cousland didn’t even need to disagree with her. The sadness in his eyes said all it needed to. He was dying. The Teyrn of Highever was dying. In the larder.

Elowen choked down a hysterical giggle. The same larder where she’d chidingly been sent to round up her dog because he was pestering the kitchen staff.

“Bryce,” her mother implored, “The servant’s passage is right there. We can flee together, find you some healing magic.” The thin hope in her voice was in vain.

“No, my dear. The castle is surrounded. I will not make it in this condition.”

“I’m afraid the Teyrn is correct,” a voice interrupted. They jumped at the sudden intrusion, and Elowen whirled, snatching up her blade from where she’d dropped it in the dust. But she was met not with one of Howe’s men, but Duncan, the Grey Warden she’d met hours earlier. “Howe’s soldiers have not yet discovered this exit, but they surround the castle.”

“Duncan,” Bryce rasped, “I beg you… take my wife and daughter to safety.”

Something in Elowen rebelled against the suggestion, _even_ if she knew in her heart he was right. It was wrong. It seemed wrong to flee into the night and abandon the castle, abandon _him._

Duncan said nothing for a moment. He looked thoughtful, like he was evaluating his options. “I will, your Lordship, but… I fear I must ask something in return.” He paused respectfully so it was clear he was not simply strong-arming a man who would clearly agree to anything in this moment. “What is happening here pales in comparison to the evil now loose in this world. I came to your castle seeking a recruit, and the darkspawn threat demands that I leave with one.”

He had been considering Ser Gilmore, but he had implied that Elowen herself would make a decent candidate. Her father had swiftly dismissed it, and she had thought no more of it, despite the brief fantasy she’d been swept up in at the notion. Duncan’s heavy gaze now rested unwaveringly on the Teyrn, but Elowen felt the weight of it. And the implication.

Now, Bryce Cousland attempted no such dismissal. “I understand,” he said, “So long as justice comes to Howe… I agree. Take Eleanor and Elowen to Ostagar, then… my daughter will join the Grey Wardens.”

The Grey Wardens had the Right of Conscription, did they not? Even if not for this bargain, there would be no way for her to refuse. But perhaps she could add her own terms.

“You have to come too,” Elowen tried.

No one spoke for several moments. Another loud crash sounded in the distance, war machines perhaps. Eventually, the Teyrna spoke in a gentle, but utterly decided, voice. “Darling, go with Duncan. You’ll have a better chance of escape without me.”

Logic said that was true, but it only made Elowen want to scream. She knew deep down that she’d be leaving without one parent tonight. Now her mother wanted her to leave with none at all?

“We can find another way,” she protested, desperation tinging her voice. She had abandoned logic. “We can fight! We can make a stand.”

“So we _all_ die?” her mother countered. “Your place is with the Grey Wardens. Mine is with your Father – at his side, to death and beyond.”

Finally she thought she would be unable to hold back the tears. She collapsed back to her knees, next to her father and mother. She didn’t even twitch when the loudest crash yet reverberated through the castle. Kerberos – almost forgotten – barked.

“They’ve broken through the gate,” the Grey Warden said. He wrapped his hand around Elowen’s wrist and yanked her to her feet.

Eleanor rose too. She nocked an arrow and made ready to lodge it in the next person to cross the larder’s threshold. “Duncan. Go – now.”

Duncan obeyed. He put an arm around Elowen’s waist, all but dragging her toward the exit. She didn’t resist, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Her boots scraped listlessly across the ground until Duncan crossed into the servant’s passage. At that point, he hefted her up over his shoulder – armor, weapons and all. She could only stare through the dank gloom, even long after her parents vanished from her sight. She was too choked with anguish and the scent of blood to even scream for them as she was hauled bodily away.

Fortunately, Elowen was more herself when Duncan dropped her in the grass outside her home, pressing a finger to his lips when she stared up at him. When he spoke, he did so at a whisper, “There is a break in the enemy line here, but it is not very wide. When I give you a signal, run – as quickly and quietly as you can. Don’t stop until you reach the trees. I’ll meet you there.”

Elowen’s eyes peered through the moonlight across an open field and rolling hills that separated the castle from the woods. She knew from years of childhood play that there was a stream also. Torches began to approach, and just like that, Duncan was hissing, “ _Now!”_ and Elowen was scrambling to her feet. She sprinted, born on energy that must have come straight from the Maker. And she didn’t look back. Not while her feet pounded the dewy grass, nor while she huffed under the weight of the sword and shield on her back. She crested one hill, then another, splashed through the shallow water of the stream, and finally, finally found herself hidden at the edge of the trees. Their thick, leafy canopies prevented the moonlight from reaching her, and she shivered in the coolness of the forest, even as sweat dampened her hairline.

She fell to her knees, breaths coming in as jagged, sharp gasps. Lungs burning. Heart pounding. Mind reeling. Where was Duncan? He had met those soldiers in combat to ensure her escape; had he…?

_No. Give him time._

Kerberos! She realized with a jolt that Kerberos had not been right on her heels as he always was. He too must have stayed behind to defend her. Or had he even followed them through the servant's passage? Had she heard the scratch of his nails on the stone or seen the glint of his eyes in the dark over Duncan's shoulder? Maker, she'd lost track of him completely.

_Come on, come on, come on._ She waited. And waited.

And waited.

Every heartbeat was stretched to its maximum length. Until she heard the familiar thump-thump-thump of canine footsteps, and Kerberos chuffing as he loped up the hill. She cried his name the second the tips of his pointed ears were visible. He picked up speed at the sight of his mistress and barreled straight into her open arms. Elowen buried her face in the mabari’s scruff, squeezing her eyes shut and digging her fingers into his brown fur. If this were just a horrible dream, she would wake up and do the same thing in the comfort of her bedroom.

Kerberos hung his head over her shoulder in an embrace, as if he knew. Elowen didn’t know how long she stayed like that before finally opening her eyes and seeing Duncan’s form making his way toward them.

And behind him, the burning of Castle Cousland.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I intend to generally follow the events of the game but also spend a lot of time in the "in-between" when the characters are developing their relationships. I'll keep using canon dialogue as is applicable so long as it doesn't interfere with the angle I'm taking, but this isn't going to be a word-for-word walk through the game. Alistair/Warden will be the main focus, but I don't plan to neglect the rest of the gang! After the first couple chapters I'll have more freedom (and characters) to get off the beaten trail, so I hope you'll stay tuned. Comments are always welcome!


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